Different Dreams
by Jaiaelle
Summary: Annie's dreams had crumbled around her. Jeff/Annie.


_Author's Note: Writing for sitcoms is hard for me since I seem to write angst so much better. But I felt compelled to write a Jeff/Annie story (who, for the record, I ship but only for an above 21 year old Annie. I still like Britta/Jeff but not as much as Jeff/Annie...and really, the age difference does make me a feel a little weird. I'm 25 and I can't imagine dating someone 15 to 20 years older than me but...it's not like I feel it's wrong...anyway, this is veering into a long conversation so STOPPED, lol). Please read and review._

_I own this computer and a cat. Not much else and certainly not Community._

**_Different Dreams_**

It seems like all her dreams have crumbled and she's standing in the midst of them, counting them as if that will make things easier. But it won't. It doesn't.

The rejection letters float on the air, finding a spot on her immaculate desk, causing more of a mess than she usually allows. Today she won't care. Today she got told by her three top schools that she wasn't good enough. Underlined. In Bold and Italic. A statement of who she is.

Student for almost four years at Greendale Community College, still searching for a boy named Troy who will never see her, wondering how, why, when, her life was nothing like she thought it would be.

She could blame it on the pills, wretched, cursed things. That's just an excuse. She knows who to blame.

Slowly, she turns a finger at herself, blasts herself, tells herself she could be so much more.

Then, just as slowly, she cleans up the not-quite-mess, tossing the papers in the wastebasket. Tomorrow. That's when she'll tell her parents (oh how she can't wait for the brief disappointment that will flit across their faces before they hug her and hug her until she can't breathe then tell her they are still _so_ proud of her).

Tonight. Tonight she learns to forget, without the help of a pill but maybe with the help of a bottle.

Her eyes wander to a calendar and she's reminded of the event that Pierce has been reminding them about for weeks but she had let slip from her mind as soon as she received the letters in the mail. There will be free alcohol. So no debate reigns in her mind. Ten minutes later, wearing a dress that is probably too tight and probably too short, her hair flowing, she is standing outside the club or building or whatever it is.

Inside, there a few people, mingling, talking, waiting. Pierce and the Do Badders will be playing soon and everyone (no one) is excited for the debut of the tenth band Piece has been in since he first started at Greendale Community College. Smoothing her hands down her dress, she surveys the room and finds her friends, standing in a glob near the stage. Troy and Abed, probably talking about what kind of foods they morph into food. As she stares at Troy's face, she waits for the heart palpitation but it's not there.

Shirley and Britta, the one commenting on how nice everything looks, while the other tries to maintain a positive attitude while still managing to put down the attire of every woman in the establishment.

Jeff. In his button up striped shirt and jeans that fit him just right, perfectly messed up hair, deep blue eyes landing on her.

There's a skip of the heart and a faint pink hue that saturates her cheeks.

In seconds, she's at the bar, proudly showing her ID, which proves that she is over 21 (22 in December, actually), and ordering something that will help ease the pain of failing, once again.

A touch and she knows it's him, the fingers of his hand spreading across the expanse of her lower back. She stops breathing when his own breath comes, hot and sticky against her ear. "You okay?"

No. "Yes."

"Are you sure because-"

"I'm fine." Her voice sounds sharp as she takes the drink out of the bartender's hand and spins toward Jeff, their eyes making contact. "How do I look?"

She likes that his eyes travel down her figure before lighting on her face once more. She likes the way his adam's apple bobs slightly as he gulps. "Yeah," he grunts and she's reminded of the first time she let her hair down in front of him.

Flashing him a huge grin, she heads toward their friends. "I think they're about to start."

Three hours later, Annie may have had too much to drink (but wasn't that the point? Though it wasn't enough to forget) and the so-called-music has created a pounding headache. Plus, tears have found their way to her eyes and she just needs to be at home, crying softly into her pillow upstairs, while her parents, downstairs, watch _So You Think You Can Dance _on the DVR until one in the morning, as they always do on Fridays. With a sigh, she makes a wish that Troy will offer to drive her home but he doesn't make a move to her side, as usual. She sees him flirting with a blonde girl in a slutty dress but she can't muster enough strength to care. Maybe because she doesn't and just hasn't gotten around to admitting it to herself.

"Need a ride home?"

It's him. Always him. There for her when no one else is and sometimes even when they are there, hanging back and waggling his eyebrows and mocking whoever wants to offer their assistance in her time of crisis (and she has plenty of those times). A funny feeling in the pit of her stomach when he makes her laugh like that and when he looks at her with his eyes as if he gets it. Troy never creates bubbles inside of her stomach that burst in her brain and make her dizzy.

"Um…sure."

It's quiet on the way home and she's confused. Jeff is not a quiet type of guy. Usually. Lately though…it's as if he has the lost the ability to make inane small talk with her. Only with her.

"I thinnnk…" Her words are slurred and she's having difficulty forming the rest of her thought. "It's my turn to ask you what's wrong."

"How is that you've only had two drinks and a couple of sips form whatever god awful fruity cocktail that Shirley ordered and you're buzzed?" His hands grip the steering wheel and he glances at her and she notices all of this because her headache is starting to fade.

"I just am speshial."

One corner of his mouth lifts in a half grin and she has the sudden urge to unfasten her seatbelt, lean across the car and press her lips to his. Resulting in the death of both of them as he loses control and careens off the road. Where they die in a fiery car crash. Jeremy Simmons on the ground all over again but much worse. And their deaths would not help them win a debate (but might prove, yet again, that man is evil).

She stays glued to her seat.

"You are that," he murmurs, though she think that she's not really supposed to hear it.

They are at her house too soon, standing in front of her door. She's rocking on her feet humming a song while the lyrics play in her head ("I want you to want me, I need you to need me"). His eyes are on the air above her head, the strap of her dress, the wooden porch beneath them. But her eyes are avoided. And that's when she tells him. "I applied to three different schools, to master's programs, and all three rejected me."

She fully expects him to soothe her with words, empty, hollow, like he does all the time, even to her. Instead, he mutters "sorry," pats her arm, stares into her eyes, licks his lips, seems almost a pile of no-confidence goo (unlike the Jeff she has known for over three years), then leans forward.

She thinks he's going to kiss her and she can't move. Doesn't want to. Eyes close because she _wants_ this (right?)

It never happens.

He's half way across the lawn, shouting that he'll see her later, before she fully understands.

Rejected, again.

- - - - - -

Monday is too bright and too early but she gets out of bed and takes a shower and does her hair and looks in the mirror, shiny, happy person.

She still hasn't told her parents so there's going to be a lot of pretending at breakfast.

And at school, where none of her friends even knew that she was applying anyway so why does it matter? But for some reason, it does matter, so she smiles a fake smile as she sits next to Britta and Shirley in their World History course.

Seeing Jeff is the worst. They sit across from each other during the lunch hour, he chats with Shirley about everyone who meanders past their table (gossip and lots of slightly mean teasing) while she tries to pay attention to Abed and Troy's conversation about…hair extensions? Pierce weighs in, as he normally does, but nothing about the day feels normal so she leaves.

She's not quite to the library when Jeff catches up to her, the fingers of one of his hands encircling her upper arm.

"What?" she snaps, perfectly aware that even in a bad mood she still comes across as a little chipper.

"I'm sorry about last night, you know with the lack of comfort. You should know by now that I'm not good at it but I might recommend Shirley, who always has-"

"Stop it." Her words are flat and edgy at the same time but they have an effect on him. He stops talking, his mask of indifference slipping for a moment. "You are the perfect person to comfort, always offering empty platitudes. Why couldn't you just do that with me, last night?"

A shifting on his feet and it hits her: he's uncomfortable. How long has he been uneasy around her? Flashes of memory assault her and it's Christmas again, under the mistletoe, staring up at Jeff, she feels like she just might vomit all over his jeans, his hands on her waist and just a peck. Lips barely touching but it's enough of a head rush that she has to sit down afterwards. And that was the moment. When things changed between the two of them. She wonders what he sees when he looks down at her now, what he saw when he looked down at her then. Jeff's always been one to understand her, more than the others and so she thinks, knows that he does see her. But goosebumps rise on her arms because what if he likes what he sees? On the inside and the out?

It's something she can't quite bend her mind around. Then he speaks and his words almost confirm her inner monologue. "I can't do that, not with you. Be fake like that." A grin spreads on his face but it doesn't reach to his eyes. As if he's joking (trying, not succeeding) with a buddy.

In her moment of clarity (at least regarding how he feels, how _she _feels, that's something else) she still has to spill out words. So many words. "You don't understand" (Yes, you do. You always do) "I never attain to the goals I set for myself, whether in my academic life or in my personal life. I'm never…enough. I'm just a reject, time and time again. And that's something you will _never _understand" (Yes, you do actually. Britta has taken you through the fine School of Rejection and I know how hurt you were the last and final time she told you that she would never, ever date you, but she liked you as a friend and isn't that enough?) "Because you're good at achieving your goals by use of flattery and force of will and all those empty platitudes I mentioned before." She lets this all out in one breath and she knows she hurt him but she couldn't bring herself to pause in her tirade. Even if his feelings for her might extend beyond buddy. Even if just thinking about him feeling that way makes her want to cry and laugh and run away and dance and get up on her tiptoes and kiss him all at once.

What about Troy? The guy she's always wanted.

The schools she always wanted to get into. What about…all of it? Her crumbling dreams.

His jaw clenches and pain registers behind his eyes. A small gasp, as if she had hit him with more than a fistful of sentences. "I guess," he finally says, his words coated in a thick layer of bitterness tinged with sarcasm. "I don't understand. How could I ever possibly understand? Sorry to have taken up your precious time."

Footsteps loud on the ground, he leaves and she hesitates just long enough (way too long) that her apology isn't heard.

- - - - - -

Fifteen texts (from her to him, sorry, sorry, sorry) and four hours later, she's staring at her Calculus text book, lying on the pink downy comforter of her bed, a MASH rerun playing on her TV, thoughts focused on him.

She wonders if she's damaged their relationship beyond repair and trembles. Jeff not being part of her life makes her feel small, strange…wrong. He needs to be a part of her life. He fits, they fit… Frustrated, she drops her pencil, she wasn't concentrating on her work anyway. Perfectly timed, her phone buzzes and she flips it open, seeing that Jeff has just sent her a text. Hot and cold, she reads it, a squeal of delight on her lips as she proceeds to place a pair of black flats on her feet and rush down the stairs, following his instructions.

He's on her porch, looking tired. All of his years are showing but she only sees his openness, vulnerability, confusion, adorableness. "I figured what I should have said Annie. Last night. That too often used cliché of when a door shuts, a window opens. I know, it's lame but it's true. Look, Annie, if your dreams had come true four years ago you would've ended up at another college, not Greendale. And then you wouldn't have met m-all of us. And I don't know if you feel the same, but I'm glad that you're in our lives."

A tidal wave of emotions surges around her, threaten to drown her. And he's right. Before Greendale, she had no friends. Those stupid little pills had actually helped her in a way, by opening the window to Greendale whereas she might have attended an Ivy League school and never met Jeff, any of them. Rejected by her three top schools means another window will open and who knows where that window might lead?

And Troy. Troy was a closed door, had been closed for so very long…

…but Jeff is her open window.

"I…" Her tongue is heavy. She is shy, shaking, suddenly more aware of herself than she ever has been. "I am glad to be your lives. In yours specifically." It sounds too formal and she wishes she could be more relaxed.

Eyebrows arching, he is perplexed. Does he, for once, not get it?

She supposes she must show him so she grasps her face with her hands and pulls him down toward her, yanking his lips to hers in more than just a mere brush. Quick to respond, his hands find her waist and he is kissing her back.

Not to help win a debate, not because they are under a mistletoe and it's another experience altogether.

It's everything she'd thought it'd be. It's more.

Panting for breath, she presses her forehead to his, giddy.

"You're still fifteen years younger than me," he blurts out, as if it's a point from a previous conversation (which maybe it is, in his head).

"In years maybe." Her tone is light and flirty as she dismisses the one concern she guesses has been holding him back from acting on his hidden and unbidden desires for her. "My parents aren't home and they won't be for awhile. Want to come up and watch MASH?"

"I haven't a heard a girl utter that kind of statement to me since I was in high school. And MASH? You watch MASH?"

"It's my favorite show."

By the look on his face, he's smitten.

And she's finally not feeling like a reject in the battlefield of all her dead dreams.

Instead, she's walking up the stairs of the house she's lived in her whole life with different dreams.

Dreams that include an unsure future and an older man who is probably just right for her.


End file.
